Personally I think the data, if not the studies are readily available, it’s just impossible to have a conversation about diet and nutrition. For example, look at this thread and you would think all you need to do is have 1 person run a treadmill for 1 hour drinking tap water and day 2 repeat the run with coconut water and boom...a legitimate study that “superfoods” are a myth.
Continue in this thread and you will note comments, for no reason whatsoever, emphatically stating antioxidants don’t exist. But just to preemptively dissuade a dialogue a suggestion people who believe antioxidants exist also believe their consumption will prevent all cancer...somehow no middle ground exists. Such is my experience discussing diet.
I find it’s not just with healthy foods and diets, but one can’t even discuss the correlation of diet and obesity, chronic inflammation, cardio vascular disease, heart disease or diabetes...at least without someone linking to a McDonald’s, Twinkie or ice cream diet where the subject lost weight. In fact I recently had a professor argue with me here on HN that the development of fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes in children (formerly adult onset diabetes) was unrelated to sugar but rather some mystery variable which hadn’t been discovered because children hadn’t been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes prior to the 1980’s and he ate a ton of sugar growing up in the 70’s.
History and entire populace’s of people can serve as the data. Look at the historical diet in Okinawa where they once had the longest life expectancy (but not since the introduction of western diet post WW2) and you will find nutrient/vitamin dense but low calorie foods, foods that are anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant rich, promote healthy liver and kidney function (detoxification). The concepts are not dissimilar to the Mediterranean diet, which also promotes health and longevity, while the foods themselves are dissimilar. It should come as no surprise that these are the same conclusions you and darktree seem to come to with your own experience, only you are focusing more on the macro side of things. I think what you are finding is you are healthy when you maximizie vitamin/nutrient to calorie intake, remove/minimize refined sugar and carbs (both inflammatory and insulin production triggers). Within that framework you can have foods (diets) as diverse as historical Okinawa and the Mediterranean diet, it just so happens food labeled superfoods also tend to (but not always) fall within the same framework.
